1 To 100
by himawarixxsandz
Summary: 100 Themes for Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles
1. Introduction

**Introduction**

_Hello. _

He used to think that hellos were so very different from goodbyes. Used to. Now, he knows that hellos aren't that different at all. Maybe they're opposites. But they're not different.

Hellos are said at the start of a friendship, a meeting, a partnership, a relationship. Goodbyes are said when they end, or when a part of them ends. Beginnings are just another name for endings.

He thinks that if the metaphor of a piece of string is used, comprehension is more easily achieved. A piece of string has two tips—if one is labeled "start", then the other is labeled "finish", correct? But the two tips are precisely alike. There is no differing which is which save for the labels. So if one were to switch them, then the "finish" becomes the "start" and vice versa.

They're the same. It just depends where you start and where you finish.

Where you begin and where you end.

When you say hello and when you say goodbye.

So when he first meets Kurogane, and he introduces himself to the scowling, growling, bristling ninja—

_My name is very long. So you can call me Fai. And the black one over there…what's your name?_

_I am not black! I'm Kurogane!_

He knows with absolute certainty that there's going to be a goodbye somewhere at the end of that string. But another thing he's learned about hellos and goodbyes is that even though you can always be sure to see and grasp the beginning of the string—the hello—you can't always see the other end.

The goodbye.

So for now, he's just going to continue with the introductions—he still has to meet Sakura, after all—and wait and watch. And when the time does come for the goodbye—

_Goodbye._

* * *

_A/N: I thought it was about time that I joined in and started something like this. One of my favorite artists on Deviant Art is doing this Clamp 100 Themes thing, and I checked out the themes, and I loved them, AND her art helps me write, so I thought what the hell not, since I'm already suffering from KuroFai withdrawal anyway, what with being stuck in Compelled and all it's angsty glory for the time being. Who knows, this might help me finish the Secrets stuff faster. _


	2. Love

**Love**

Hey, mage.

Can I ask you something?

If I tell you that I don't hate you…what will you do? Will you jump up and down ecstatically and cling to me in that way that makes me want to throw you off and drop kick you until you're a safe twenty meters from me? Or will you just stand there and smile stupidly and tell me how great that is? Is it any use for me to try at all to even predict what you'll do?

Because I know that it's not going to be fucking simple—nothing's ever simple with you. Will you not care at all—and just pretend to care? I don't think it's unlikely at all that you actually don't give a shit about what I think of you. Or maybe you're some freaking masochist that wants hate. How should I know? You never tell me any crap.

But, hey, mage.

Can I ask you something else?

If I tell you that I…like you…what will you do? What'll you say? Are you just going to laugh and call me more bastardizations of my fucking name? Will you tease me and piss me off until I grab my sword and mutilate your head? Or will you actually listen and respond like someone who's not only not an idiot, but sane, too?

Because I don't like a lot of things, and whatever I do like is pretty permanent. I'm not going to change my mind about it, because I make my decisions real and true and unwavering and I don't flit around like a flighty moron, mage. You'd know, wouldn't you? I like what I like, and I don't try to hide it behind curtains of flimsy smiles and laughs.

And, hey…so, mage.

Can I ask you one more thing?

If I tell you that I love you—

What will you do?

* * *

_A/N: Yeah...I probably should've come up with something way more epic and deep than this, but I wanted to keep all of them (considerably) short, and this was all my flu-riddled-Dayquil-influenced mind could think of. Ah well. It feels not-so-Kurogane, too....*headdesk*_


	3. Light

**Light**

What's light?

Well, scientifically, it's an electromagnetic radiation that, in summary, is of a particular wavelength visible to the human eye. More or less, I suppose. But if it's taken out of that context and placed in another—another, being what light symbolizes in a more…literal sense. _Then_, what is light?

If the members of our little traveling group were asked to define "light" with one name, I'm sure—I _know_—that they would all call out mine. All of them. Sakura, Syaoran, Mokona…Kurogane. They would. But I wouldn't.

It's because to them, I am light. I don't quite know—and I can't—if it's because I'm magic—because everything I am is magic and everything I do and touch and speak and walk and act and sound and smell and everything is magic, because that's just what I am. I don't know if it's because I give off light—because my hair is light and my eyes are light and my skin and my smile and my voice and my words are light.

But I'm not.

I might seem light, but I'm the farthest thing.

This may my own delusional, biased opinion, but I believe that Kurogane is light. And maybe not even that; I think Kurogane is a certain type of light—he's sunlight. His eyes are red—they smolder and burn and scorch and they seep into you the way exactly sunlight seeps through your clothes and makes you hot, hot, hot. Look at his skin—how can mine be light, when Kurogane's skin always looks like it's been kissed and hugged and touched and caressed by every bit of light everywhere?

Kurogane's _warm_. _He's hot_—and when he looks at you, you feel hot. You can feel everything he's thinking about you, and even if you feel he hates you, you never have to hesitate to know that, because Kurogane's always sure and that surety is given off by every bit of heat coming from him.

But then again, maybe it isn't their fault that they'd automatically pick me if asked a question about light. Maybe it's because none of them have been where I have. None of them have been touched like he touches me—he wouldn't know it himself.

Maybe it's because none of them have had his fingers imprinted into the inside of their thighs and felt little pinpricks of candlelight burning into the skin.

Maybe it's because none of them have had his eyes holding their hearts and felt the hottest wash of sunlight covering them like a blanket—so hot it almost hurts.

Maybe it's because none of them have had him _inside_ of them and felt like fire was carving and scorching itself into their bodies, burning them slowly from the inside out.

Maybe it's because none of them have had him whisper into their ears—whisper words of heat and promises of pure flames and felt like they were listening to the sun sing.

Or maybe it's just because none of them have had him love them and felt like the earth—always hoping that the sun will rise another day, and always hoping that when it sets, it won't be the last time because if it is—

Well…then there wouldn't be any more light, now would there?

* * *

_A/N: Okay, by now, I suggest that you go to the right of the page and click the 1/2 screen, since it'll look a whole lot better for these. Aside from that, I was a little bit lost on this one as how to frame my thoughts, but basically, the point I was trying to get across was that to me, even though nearly everybody else in the fandom thinks that Kurogane's dark and Fai's light, I really always thought it was the other way around and that CLAMP was trying to get that irony around. Ah well. _


	4. Dark

**Dark**

Kurogane flicked the lights on in the room. He stood by the doorway, watching the lamp glow orange and ignite toward the ceiling. His hands surreptitiously stuffed themselves into his pockets. "You're not supposed to read in the dark," he commented on the scene before him.

Fai was on the bed, stretched out on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, books surrounding him—opened before his eyes, and stacked all around his arms. He rolled into a sitting position, and looked at Kurogane through his pale bangs, smiling—of course. "Who ever said? I happen to like the dark." He closed one of the books, tossing it to the ninja.

Kurogane caught it easily in his hand, and scowled. "No one ever said, dumbass. It's common sense. You'll ruin your eyes and then you'll need glasses. And I never said you had to hate the dark. I just said you shouldn't read in it." He crossed over and carefully placed the book onto one of the precariously towering stacks surrounding Fai. "What're you reading anyway? You never read. Normally at this time, you're haunting the refrigerator, looking for some booze."

The mage laughed. "No, no. That's Kuro-tan's job, isn't it now?"

Kurogane scowled deeper. "Or haunting the house with the manjuu bun, planning some half-witted antics."

Fai simply placed his cheek in his palm and fluidly raised one eyebrow and curved his lips. "It's just like Kuro-sama to believe that the whole world is out to get him. You really have a big head, don't you? I can see it now—it's quite inflated. Perhaps you should use that nice, shiny sword of yours to let out some of that hot air?" He watched in great amusement as the ninja's face turned a rather unhealthy puce sort of color that probably signified the mage's near, impending death. "But while we're on the subject of things haunting, I'm actually reading these books so Syaoran-kun can get some shut-eye."

"You think that that house up the creek is haunted?" Kurogane folded his arms and leaned against the nightstand. "With the Princess's feather?"

"Well, with a ghost," Fai adjusted. "That, yes, is probably powered by Sakura-chan's feather."

The ninja unfolded his arms and replaced them into his pockets. "And you're doing the reading at, what, one in the morning so the kid can get some sleep? Sounds like you're getting pretty close to me. That all right?"

Fai merely continued to smile.

"So, tell me, mage, how does this have anything to do with you reading in the dark?"

"I like the dark."

"I've been told."

"That's all there is to it, really." Fai shrugged.

"_I_ don't think so."

"Maybe you're wrong, then."

"No. I'm not."

Fai closed his eyes up into yet another brainwashing smile. "How are you so sure?"

It was Kurogane's turn to raise his eyebrows.

A pause.

"Could you please leave, Kuro-pyon? I have to finish three more books by the morning, and I'd let to get some sleep in too, if possible. And make sure you turn off the lights as you go."

Another pause. Kurogane stepped closer to the bed. "I'm not leaving, mage. You know that. Now, quit this bullshit and please tell me you don't have some freaky fucking darkness fetish."

Fai laughed. "I promise you I don't." He curled his toes—the way the ninja knew he always did when they worked on peeling away another layer of the mask. "No…I just…liked the dark—I always have. When the lights are on—you can see everything. You can see expressions on people's faces. But in the dark, you can't see any of it. So you can make whatever expression you want. As long as you don't make any sounds, you can even—"

"Cry," Kurogane finished. "You can cry and no one would know."

Fai smiled at his knees, his shoulders caving up in a way that looked as if the mage needed the darkness quite a bit right now. His fingers locked with each other tightly, and on cue, the fair hair closed in over his eyes. Kurogane rolled his eyes to the ceiling and sighed. Here they went again. The ninja knelt on the floor, right up against the bed, and reached up, tugging at a strand of the blond hair. "You'd better stop looking like that, mage. The lights are still on."

Fai tilted his head to one side, his hair swinging along with the movement. "Sorry. I told you, Kuro-kun. You should turn off the lights." He smiled cheerily. "It'll be a lot better if you can't see me—you'd like the darkness, then, too."

Kurogane watched the mage's face, his hand moving gently up and down the side of Fai's throat—up higher, touching the slighter man's cheek. "No. Not really." He shoved Fai back lightly. "I don't think you should decide what I do or don't like." He heard Fai chuckle softly at the base of his throat. "Besides," Kurogane coughed, blinking furiously. "You don't have to turn the lights off. If you…cry, I'm not going to…tell anyone or anything."

The ninja didn't dare look at Fai's expression now, but he heard a shocked silence take reign of the room. Then, a hand snaked onto his shoulder—a small, cool hand. Reluctantly—or maybe not so reluctantly—Kurogane glanced warily back at the mage. The smiling mage. A nice smile—a soft smile. Not one of those Cheshire cat ones that creeped the hell and _annoyed_ the hell out of the ninja.

"You know, Kuro-puu," Fai murmured, his eyes narrowing into irritatingly seductive blue slits, "There's another reason why I'm quite fond of the dark."

And Kurogane only had three and a quarter seconds—after Fai had grabbed hold of his shirt collar, yanked their lips together and the ninja onto the bed—to wonder why Fai hadn't mentioned that there was a light switch beside the headboard, before he felt small, cool hands unbuckling his pants, and then Kurogane only had room for one thought:

_The dark isn't _that _bad. _

_I guess._

* * *

_A/N: I borrowed a few ideas from Hikari Kaitou's "Lovely Darkness" for this one. And you know that it isn't a KuroFai drabble fic until a chapter like this one rolls along. Anyway, the next theme is "Seeking Solace". So prepare for the angst. Post-Celes angst, to be exact._


	5. Seeking Solace

**Seeking Solace**

Kurogane can't quite understand why Fai's crying. He can't comprehend why, after the ninja had just saved the mage's life, Fai—why anyone—would cry in a situation like this. He can understand easily why Fai's apologizing, over and over and over and over again, all in a jumble and mess of incomprehensible sentences. The ninja never quite expected for that to happen, but nevertheless he knows why—because Fai not only has some serious explaining to do, but also some serious apologizing, some of which he's doing right now.

But why would the mage cry?

Still covered in blood and sweat and now, tears, instead of cleaning himself and getting the rest that they both needed, Fai was crying over him as Shirasagi's medics were trying to stop the profuse bleeding from the stump that used to be Kurogane's left arm. And so, he really doesn't know what Fai can't wait to start apologizing when, maybe, they're alone and not in the fucking emergency room.

He doesn't even quite know why they let Fai in. Even if they had to strap him to a pole, the medics should've known better than to let a psycho mage, who'd had more than enough emotional trauma for the past hours, in to witness them operating on Kurogane. It's just a little stupid, is all.

And maybe Fai thinks Kurogane's going to die just because his arm was cut off, which is completely bull because it's not even that much blood—not really—so the mage is apologizing and crying as though this were Kurogane's funeral instead of an attempt to save his life (not that it's in any danger, damn it) now because he's afraid that he won't be able to later.

It's probably the best guess, Kurogane thinks, as Fai looks like he's about to pass out any minute, exhausted and completely tuckered out from the previous hell he'd went through and now trying to seek solace from a ninja who's so far gone he can see purple spots in Fai's blond hair.

Besides, even though it's true that Kurogane wants Fai to apologize, he doesn't want the mage to have to work this hard, since Kurogane hates any unnecessary actions, and everything after the first "I'm so sorry, Kuro-tan, so sorry" was just redundant.

Kurogane had forgiven Fai before Fai had forgiven himself.


	6. 6 to 14

**06: Break Away**

Even though it's Kurogane who's walking away the minute those three words _("Good morning, Kurogane") _come out of his mouth, Fai feels that it's _his_ heart that's slowly breaking away into pieces.

**07: Heaven**

Kurogane knows that somewhere within Fai, the mage must believe that after all the sins he's committed, he can't possibly be forgiven, and therefore, can't possibly ever be allowed into heaven—or whatever sort of blissful reward exists in the afterlife—but whenever he watches Fai be just Fai _(beautiful, and golden, and fair, and tortured, and he's gone through so much)_, he thinks that if whatever deity up there doesn't let the fucking moron through the golden gates, He's got another thing coming to him when Kurogane kicks the bucket.

**08: Innocence**

Fai doesn't think Kurogane is innocent, and Kurogane thinks that you would have to had have been dropped on your head when you were a child to think Fai was; so when they have sex with one another for the first time, Fai certainly doesn't treat Kurogane as one who's innocent of the dirty deed (clawing at his back, and bruising his lips, and whispering into his ear), but for some reason, Kurogane treats Fai like he's an absolute virgin (gentle thrusts, and slow caresses, and lush kisses), and that somehow turns something within Fai that causes his cheeks to end up moist and tearstained by the end of the night as though he _was_ an innocent.

**09: Drive**

Kurogane believes, as Fai smiles at him in a way so cheerful it's positively demonic with wind whipping through his hair because of the stupid sunroof, that he was just lucky there were no cars in Nihon—not that, y'know, Kurogane planned to take Fai back with him, hazardous metal monsters or no.

**10: Breathe Again**

Fai doesn't know if vampires need to breathe (Kamui didn't seem to need to while submersed in the reservoir), but in the folklore versions of Celes, vampires are no longer considered properly human, thus, have no use for their time frozen lungs; but then, Fai wonders, if vampires no longer need to breathe, how come, once he sees that grin on Kurogane's face _("This is revenge, Kuro-sama")_ it feels like he can finally breathe again?

**11: Memory**

Kurogane has his more than fair share of painful memories, but he has his perfectly fair share of wonderful ones, too; and, he knows that Fai has more than eleven people's share of painful memories, and enough good memories to suffice for a rabbit—but when Fai's fist collides with his jaw and he hears that blasted brilliant nickname, he knows that soon enough, they'll be able to make both of their good memories outweigh their painful ones.

**12: Insanity**

Kurogane knows that he's not the most normal person out there, but he also knows that at the very least, he can't be called insane—insanity implies a certain amount of mental wrongness, and although Kurogane isn't normal by any standards, he believes that he's perfectly healthy in both mind and spirit; unfortunately, he can't say that by the end of the journey, his status as a healthy, strapping young man will have remained for sure (blond, _insane_ wizards tend to do that to him, he's found).

**13: Misfortune**

Fai thinks that even without his twin, he himself is enough to bring an overdose of misfortune into even the luckiest person's life—a person who even might have had the gods themselves hovering over their cradle; meaning that when he tells Kurogane this, as he sits leaning against Kurogane's bare chest covered by the blankets of the ninja's futon, Kurogane just looks at him funny, and Fai can't help but think that, despite all the accusations about no one that skinny, white, and blond can be human, it's Kurogane who's inhuman _("Ain't no damn gods stalked me when I was a baby—my old man would've skinned their hides.")_ .

**14: Smile**

In one of the world's they'd fallen into, there had been a store that sold pretty much everything the citizens of the country had needed, and their logo had seemed to be this frightening, yellow sphere with two black holes for eyes and a long, black curve for a mouth—Syaoran said it was supposed to be a smile, apparently, but Kurogane said it was an evil smirk of bloodlust—and worlds later, what frustrates Kurogane the most, is sometimes, that fucking smiley face can look more sincere than the mage's own smile.

* * *

_A/N: It's a lot easier to do one-sentence drabbles--except I think my sentences are cheating at their length.....anyhow, if any of you are reading this and you also read Compelled, I'm more than sorry for having not updated in a month (the shame), but I'm currently working on a super long chapter to make it up to you, so just a little more waiting. On the bright side, I actually have this chapter planned, and it's one in which Mioru talks to Watanuki and Doumeki about doing the naughty in the locker rooms and how it's a big no-no; Yuui getting guilty over being a bad big brother because he wants to screw his baby bro's boyfriend (hey, what's new?); more Kamui and Fuuma zomg!tension; even more SubaruxSeishiro angst (again, what's new?); and a surprise at the end. _


End file.
